Riot Police Evict Migrants, Not the Abandoned Building's Owner
Mainstream media frames the eviction of 150 migrants from an abandoned school in Badalona as a simple 'public safety' issue. The Independent dutifully reports this. What they gloss over, of course, is the grotesque irony of deploying riot police—a resource-intensive, often violent solution—to remove vulnerable people from an *empty* building, while the actual owners of said empty building face no
such robust state intervention or condemnation for letting property sit derelict amidst a housing crisis. In Spain, an estimated 3.4 million homes stand empty, yet the poor are the 'hazard'. One might wonder if the 'public safety' concern extends to the fundamental safety of people without housing, or if it's reserved exclusively for the discomfort of the property-owning class. Deploying riot
police against migrants in a disused school, rather than against property speculators leaving millions of homes vacant, truly clarifies where the state's 'safety' priorities lie. Who exactly is being 'protected' here?